


The Bruce and Tony-verse

by beetle



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 10:47:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/810715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for vinniebatman. The title says it all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Schwarma and Denouement

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I wish it was mine, but if wishes was horses, we'd all be eatin' steak.  
> Notes: Spoilers for the movie, of course.

It’s different. When you’re in a firefight with someone.  
  
See, you know they’ve got your back, and they know you’ve got theirs, and there’s an unspoken oath that yes, you’ll die for one another if called.  
  
I didn’t know that kind of human connection could be forged under something as violent and predacious as war. That it could be fostered so quickly and so completely, motivated as it was by rage and horror and. . . .  
  
Camaraderie is too loose a word for the end result, you know? We—the members of the Avengers Initiative—may not know each other’s histories, or backstory—and frankly, I don’t want to know what awful fires forged Clint or Natasha into Hawkeye and the Black Widow . . . I don’t  _need_  to know, as Director Fury would tell me. It’s enough that I know they’d die for me, and I for them. This is more than camaraderie. This is . . . a bond possibly as fucked up as we are, individually or altogether.  
  
And we’re some pretty fucked up people. Damaged and lost.  
  
No, I don’t know how it is for the others, seeing what they’ve seen, knowing what they know . . . doing what they’ve done. Perhaps they form that kind of attachment all the time. Brothers-in-arms, so to speak. It takes a lot to trust a man with your life, but once you do, that trust is complete and unwavering, no matter what kind of man he is or was before. No matter what kind of man he turns into when the chips are down and his back is against the wall, and all he has left is overwhelming rage.  
  
No, I don’t know  _exactly_  how it is for the others, but I suspect it’s the same for them. They’re certainly capable of it—maybe even prone to it. I’d have to be blind to miss the way Clint and Natasha snuck looks at each other at the Schwarma Hut, smiling tired smiles with their eyes and nothing else. It’s enough that they’ve fought and killed for one another, and nearly died for one another.  
  
Steve and Thor had bonded in grim, brotherly silence—similar men, born to lead, cursed with an unerring sense of honor and the weight of their respective worlds on their shoulders. I wouldn’t have thought two guys like that would be able to tolerate each other’s presence, but there’s a mutual respect there, and even relief that in this company of oddballs, this group of people with shifting scruples, they’ve each found a person whose own ethics are as unbending and unbreakable as the other’s.  
  
Then there’s me. And there’s Stark.  
  
Content to hold up both ends of a conversation I was too tired and shell-shocked and empty to have, he talked in that frenetic, self-referential way he has, occasionally nudging my leg with his own to make sure I was still keeping up. I wasn’t, not really, but he didn’t seem to mind. Though eventually even he fell silent, focusing instead on his schwarma. He was still on his first one, thanks to the talking, but I was on my fifth. And never mind how many Mountain Dews I’d swilled down since we got there (between Thor and I, the Schwarma Hut will be short on Schwarma and Dew for a while).  
  
The Other Guy takes it out of me. I’d be eating like this for weeks: carbo-loading and guzzling caffeinated sugar-water like it's going out of style. Going about the work of rebuilding Bruce Banner, physically . . . and mentally.  
  
When Stark ran out of words, it was as if the rest of us realized just how exhausted we are. Steve was nodding off over his barely-touched meal, Thor’s chewing had slowed down. Clint was leaning back in his chair, brooding at the ceiling, and Natasha was staring out the space where the Schwarma Hut’s window used to be. Stark was rearranging his ketchup packets in increasingly abstract shapes, and I . . . couldn’t summon up so much as a flicker of the rage that was always on a simmer within me. Today was enough to bank those embers for what I hoped was a very long time.  
  
“So. That was Schwarma.” Stark nudged my leg again, and I looked up, realizing I, too, had been nodding off. Stark smiled like a man having a revelation and scattered the ketchup packets absently. “Delightful. I wonder if they’re looking for investors.”  
  
“Leave ‘em alone, Stark. This place may be the last of the Mom-and-Pop joints in New York City. Especially after today,” Steve roused himself to say with heavy disapproval. Which just served to make Stark smirk.  
  
“Oh, c’mon, Cap, I can see it now: a Schwarma Hut in every city in America. Schwarma could really be a household name. The next Big Mac.” Stark waggled his eyebrows and Steve sighed, catching on to the fact that Stark was likely just winding him up. Likely.  
  
He heaved another weary sigh. “A big  _what_?”  
  
“A hamburger. A really famous hamburger,” I said, wishing I had one. My stomach growled loudly, and Stark whistled, reaching over to pat my gut.  
  
“Somebody’s still got a hungwy in the tummy,” he sing-songed, his eyebrows waggling again. I couldn’t help smiling.  
  
“What is a  _Mom-and-Pop joint_?” Thor asked around his current mouthful. Stark rolled his eyes at me, and muttered something about  _Dark Ages Fabio_. He rearranged his ketchup packets and briefly—then rather less briefly, off of Thor’s blank look—explained the concept of small restaurants versus chain restaurants.  
  
It was ten of the most surreal minutes of my life, and that’s saying a lot.  
  


*

  
  
Stark Tower was one of what seems like very few buildings that emerged from the invasion relatively unscathed, and it was where I was apparently spending the night.  
  
“Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Cap are being debriefed into next Tuesday, Thor’s standing guard over His Royal Doucheness, Fury’s getting his ass chewed out by The Super Secret Council of Type-A Personalities. And you and I are at loose ends,” Stark said as we watched the others fly off to locations unknown in an army helicopter. Then he snorted. “My helicopters are much nicer.”  
  
“I dunno—I can probably stay at a motel or something—“ I said half-heartedly, and Stark snorted again, looking at me.  
  
“With what money?”  
  
I shoved my hands in the pockets of my second pair of borrowed pants in twelve hours, and rocked back and forth on my heels and toes. “I don’t suppose I could borrow fifty bucks. . . ?”  
  
Five minutes later found me climbing into  _Stark’s_  helicopter.  
  
It  _was_  nicer.  
  


*

  
  
I don’t know  _what_  I expected. Of Stark’s place, of Stark’s hospitality, or of Stark.  
  
The room I was given was fully four times larger than my place in Calcutta. It was decorated in the same art deco as the rest of Stark’s penthouse, saved from complete sterility by seemingly random modern and old-fashioned accents.  
  
I’d wandered around the room, bemused, picking up  _objects de art_  and wondering which ones had cost more than my entire education. Then, avoiding the mirror above the vanity and the one in the bathroom, I’d made use of the shower, soaping up and rinsing off till the water ran clear. Then I stood in there under the never ending supply of hot water till I felt relatively human again.  
  
It took a while.  
  
When I reluctantly turned off the water, grabbed a towel, and stepped out of the shower, I dried off then took a breath. I was probably asking for trouble, but I couldn’t avoid shiny surfaces forever, try though I might. So I wiped down the mirror and found that I didn’t have any trouble meeting my own gaze. For the first time in a long time, it was like looking into the mirror before the advent of the Other Guy had been. I just saw  _me_. Tired, gaunt, a little greyer than a mere few days ago, but still me.  
  
I smiled at my reflection and it smiled back, a bit pained, but still genuine. Then I wrapped the towel around my waist and exited the bathroom.  
  
The air in the bedroom was cool enough to break me out into goosebumps and I shivered. Then I jumped, because Tony Stark was sitting on my erstwhile bed, in nothing but black silk pajama bottoms, examining one of my borrowed shoes like a man trying to solve a puzzle.  
  
“What size do you wear? Twelve? Thirteen?”  
  
“Um.” I scrambled to wrap the towel more snugly around myself. “Fourteen, actually. Those were a little small.”  
  
“Jesus Christ, but you must have a huge dick!”  
  
“Uh—“ I blushed and clutched the towel around myself a little tighter.  
  
“How’s the room, by the way?” Stark dropped the shoe and looked up at me, smirking. “Is everything to sir’s liking?”  
  
“It’s fine—great actually. Definitely nicer than the flophouse I was planning to stay at with your fifty bucks.”  
  
Stark laughed and stood up, crossing his arms. In the center of his chest, the little circle of light that was constantly saving his life glowed and glowed. “Damned by faint praise. Anyway, I brought you some of my clothes that I thought might fit.” He gestured at the bed and I noticed the neat pile of clothes that’d been partially hidden by his body. Pants, shirts, socks, jackets, boxers. “We’re pretty much the same size, I figure, so these’ll have to do till I can get my tailor to make you some couture of your very own.”  
  
I shook my head. “Uh, no, I couldn’t—“  
  
“You saved my life, so you  _could_ ,” Stark said, his face going from playful to solemn in a matter of split seconds. “More importantly, you helped save the  _world_. I think I could part with some of my fabulous duds to keep you from getting arrested for public indecency.”  
  
Stark’s eyes flicked down to the towel and I rolled my eyes, almost smiling.  
  
“Alright,” I told him, approaching the bed to look through the pile of clothes. All the while I could feel Stark’s gaze on me. That, coupled with the sly, unfamiliar feel of silk, the softness of costly cotton, the delightful, almost subdermal scratch of fine wool . . . I dunno. It kicked my body into some kind of overdrive, I guess. I started to get . . . aroused.  
  
And it didn’t help that I could smell Stark, and he smelled  _good_. Not like the expensive, slightly loud cologne he usually wears, but like clean skin and fabric softener. It was a little dizzying, and I could feel the Other Guy turn over restlessly within.  
  
I could have easily blamed this . . . arousal on him, but why bother lying to myself?   
  
From the moment I met Stark, I’ve been drawn to him. I hadn’t really understood  _why_  until the thought of wearing clothes that had been against his skin nearly did me in and let the Other Guy out.  
  
For the second time in twenty-four hours the Other Guy and I were utterly in sync with regard to desire, if not intent. Because while we both wanted whatever peace we could find in Stark’s arms—assuming he were even willing—I had no intention of forming anymore of a connection with another person than I already had. Connections got me in trouble . . . led to  _incidents_  like my restructuring of Harlem.  
  
No, this was one course of action I would  _not_  be pursuing.  
  
Then I was gasping in a startled breath when Stark’s hands landed on my hips, warm and firm even through the towel. A second later I could feel his body heat all down my back and his breath on my shoulder, slow and even. It was followed by a gentle press of his lips that nonetheless made me shiver.  
  
And moan.  
  
Stark chuckled, sliding his hands around to my stomach, then up my sternum. They were rough, calloused, not unlike my own. A workman’s hands that belied the respective lifestyles we lead.  
  
I didn’t know what to do with my own hands or arms, other than keep them out of the way. The Other Guy rumbled from within, content to leave himself in Stark’s hands, convinced that the guy knew what he was doing. What he was  _courting_.  
  
I, however, wasn’t so sure.  
  
“Listen, Stark,” I breathed, and he chose that moment, of course, to press the front of his body against the back of mine. He was hard, and that kind of shorted out both my brain and what passed for the Other Guy’s.  
  
“ _Tony,_ ” Stark said, kissing my shoulder again, then nuzzling it with his nose. “Call me  _Tony_.”  
  
I sighed. “Tony. We can’t do this.”  
  
“I think we already  _are_  doing this.” His hands slid back down my chest and stomach, to the line of demarcation created by the towel. He bunched his fingers in it. “Tell me this is okay, Doc.”  
  
 _It’s really, really not_ , I wanted to say, but all that came out was: “Call me  _Bruce_.”  
  
“Bruce.” Stark’s— _Tony’s_  fingers tugged lightly on the towel, not hard enough to undo it though, and both the Other Guy and I felt a surge of impatience. Only mine turned to guilt and regret. This couldn't happen, no matter how much any of the three of us might want it.  
  
“Bruce,” Tony said again, weaving it into another shoulder-kiss, and I sagged a little in his arms, leaning back against him, my breathing stuttered as I felt him grow harder against me. “Bruce, I want you. More than just about anything.”  
  
I smiled a little, both flattered and dubious. “More than the rights to the Schwarma Hut?”  
  
“Oh, much more than  _that_ ,” he promised, a smile in his own voice. “And I’d like very much to have you.”  
  
“Why?” I shook my head and put my hands on his own, stilling their restless clenching on the towel. “You know what I am—“  
  
“Yes, I do,” Tony agreed lowly. “Genius. Rebel. Philanthropist . . .  _hero_.”  
  
“That’s not what I meant, Tony, and you know it.”  
  
“Ah, you meant the Other Guy?” Tony snorted, his hands settling on my abdomen, one finger slowly circling my navel. He leaned up to murmur in my ear. “If he’s listening, I want  _him_ , too. I want to look you in the eyes while I’m inside you, and see him looking back out at me.”  
  
“You . . . wanna fuck the Hulk?” I hung my head, disappointment dampening my arousal. Like I said, I hadn't known what to expect of him, of . . .  _Tony_. But it certainly hadn't been this. “Another conquest for Tony Stark?”  
  
“No.” Tony laughed, and flicked his tongue across my ear lobe until I shivered again. “I just nuked an invading alien spaceship via a trans-galactic portal to the other side of the universe. I think I’m done conquesting for the next little while.”  
  
I opened eyes I hadn’t been aware I’d closed, and could see our reflection in the mirror above the vanity. Tony was looking over my shoulder and directly into my eyes, and I blushed. “Then . . . why  _do_  you want the Hulk?”  
  
Tony smiled at me for so long, I started to smile back.  
  
“Because he’s beautiful,” Tony said softly, holding my gaze. “You’re  _both_  beautiful.”  
  
My eyebrows shot up. “ _Beautiful_ , huh? Now there’s an adjective I’ve never heard used to describe either me or the Other Guy.”  
  
“Hmm. I figured. That’s why I told you. I think you should get used to hearing that you're beautiful and pretty damned incredible. Maybe even start taking it for granted.” Tony’s gaze was almost hypnotic, and this time, when he started tugging on the towel again . . . I let him.  
  
“Tell me this is okay,” he whispered as the towel was undone and falling down to bracket my hips and thighs, saved from dropping to the floor by the press of his body and mine. The vanity mirror informed me that Tony wasn’t the only one who was hard. My erection stood straight out, curving gently upward toward my abdomen, tinted faintly, but noticeably green: A big, freak-show of a cock, but it was the only one I had. There was no getting around it. I tried to catch Tony’s gaze to see what he made of it, but his eyes were locked somewhat further south, wide as saucers.   
  
"Tell me I'm still beautiful, Tony," I said ruefully, unable to help myself. I couldn't tell if it was all me, or the Other Guy, too. I rather think it was the latter. "That I'm still incredible."  
  
Tony let out a breath, warm and humid on my cheek, and his hands slid lower, till they had me in a loose, two-handed grip.  
  
“Jesus, Bruce,” he said, laughing a little, giving me a friendly squeeze and resting his chin on my shoulder. “Beautiful,  _incredible_ , imminently  _groinable_ —I'm totally gonna go down on you before I fuck you, by the way—brave, smart, funny—and did I mention groinable?"  
  
"Uh, I think you did. . . ." I nodded, suddenly shy and breathless. Tony's eyes met mine again, crinkling at the corners.  
  
"Good, because— _yeah. Fuck_ , this must be what Mr. Spock’s dick looks like." Tony gently hefted my cock like it was one of his  _objects de art_. "Only I’m thinking his would be about half this size. Are we feeling faint, perhaps? What with all that blood rushing to our Incredibly Huge Cock?”  
  
I started chuckling, then laughing as Tony’s hands began moving on me, warm and rough and just right. It felt more than great, it felt—  
  
“Okay,” I said hesitantly, despite the growing accord reached by my body and the Other Guy. I was distracted, it’s true, by the sensations coming from without and within—and by the visual Tony and I made as he stroked me and stroked me. As good as that visual looked, I knew that I, at least, wasn't beautiful or incredible. I was just  _Bruce_. And sometimes just the  _Other Guy_. But Tony thought I was, for some reason, beautiful. And he had no reason to lie. Surely he knew that with a little effort, he could have had me without stroking my  _ego_ , as well.  
  
He had meant what he said, and had said what he meant.  
  
Almost dizzied with that realization—and by another human connection forged, however unwisely—I swallowed and nodded again, covering his hands with my own as I said more certainly: “Okay. Yes.”  
  
Tony's gaze held mine in the mirror and he smiled.


	2. The Awkward Morning After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The title says it all. But there's pr0n, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Spoilers for the movie, of course.

“Do you always watch your lovers while they sleep?”  
  
Startled, I sit up on my elbow and look away quickly, obviously, as Tony opens his eyes and smiles up at me. Yellow, late-morning sunlight is shining in through the huge picture window of the guest bedroom, turning everything golden . . . even his dark, amused eyes. “Not always. And anyway, you apparently weren’t sleeping.”  
  
Tony stretches and chuckles. “Not for the past few minutes, anyway.” He sits up, too, the slither of silk sheets sliding down his body causing me to shiver. No less so, when he wraps his arms around my waist and kisses my shoulder. He seems to like doing that, and I . . . can’t say I mind.  
  
I can feel connections forging—at least on my end. Those dangerous human connections that lead to Incidents that I can’t afford to have. Even now, I can’t say I have total control of when the Other Guy puts in an appearance . . . though for the past twelve hours, he’s been strangely quiescent.  
  
Considering that I let him out to play yesterday—and he played  _hard_ —maybe that quiescence isn’t  _so_  strange.  
  
“You’re thinking too hard, sexy,” Tony murmurs on my shoulder, his lips traveling around to my nape as one hand finds its way to my cock and the other to my right nipple. He tweaks it pretty hard and I yelp, surprised into glaring at him reproachfully. He leans close and looks into my eyes, searching them intently.  
  
“Nothing, huh?” He asks playfully, tweaking my nipple again, this time more gently, while his thumb plays on the tip of my cock. I take a breath as my eyes flutter shut then lean back in his arms and store the memory of how it feels to do so. Something to keep me warm when I’m back in Calcutta or wherever, alone.  
  
“I wouldn’t say  _nothing_.” It comes out as a gasp, and I open my eyes to Tony’s smile . . . the one that crinkles the corners of his eyes and makes them twinkle.  
  
Suddenly the smile turns wicked, and his finger slides lightly down my cock, to my balls, and—when I shift my leg to give him access—further back. He’s not shy about fingering me and I’m not shy about arching up off the bed to give him better leverage. Or about telling him how good it feels to have him inside me.  
  
“Wow . . . I could play with you all day—you’re so  _responsive_ ,” he says, sounding very pleased with himself. I laugh breathlessly, clenching and releasing around his scissoring, searching fingers. He knows what he’s looking for, and before too long finds it. Fireworks explode behind my eyes and my nerve endings light up like Christmas.  
  
“ _Unh . . . God, Tony_  . . . yeah, it’s been awhile since I've had anyone to . . . respond to,” I admit ruefully.  
  
“Hmm. That means you have a lot of catching up to do.” Tony bites my ear lobe and the hand that’d been playing with my nipple drops down to my cock, his thumb swiping the tip again. A moment later, that thumb is brushing my lips and I open my mouth, sucking his finger in and tasting myself. “And I’d be  _glad_  to help you with that.”  
  
“Mm.”  
  
Before too much time passes, we’re prone again, my leg over Tony’s shoulder, the other splayed over the edge of the bed as he sinks into me, slow and sweet. His eyes are wide and he’s biting his lip in concentration.  
  
I smile. “You’re not gonna break me, Tony,” I say, and he smiles back absently.  
  
“Promise?”  
  
“Promise.”  
  
That absent smile turns into the perennial Tony Stark smirk. “Good. ’Cause I want to fuck you hard and fast.”  
  
I flush all over, a faint green patina, that makes Tony’s wide eyes widen further, and he groans, pulling out slightly then driving himself home with one hard thrust that makes me shout and clutch at him, my hand on his shoulder and every muscle in my body around his cock.  
  
That doesn’t stop him from pulling out and pushing immediately back in. It hurts so good, I screw my eyes shut and watch the fireworks, breathing in time to each thrust, letting him bend me practically in half, his weight pressing me into the firm mattress and expensive sheets. I have to grit my teeth and think out the Fibonacci Sequence just to keep from coming like a sex-starved virgin.  
  
Then the hand on my leg is gone, brushing my face gently a second later, a disorienting counterpoint to the way he thrusts in again and again and again, hitting my prostate like it’s a castle under siege and he’s got the only battering ram.  
  
But that caress . . . that caress stays gentle and almost reverent. Like I'm something special and indeed breakable. Or something wild and easily-spooked that he's trying to tame to his hand, and I realize  _he is_. He's . . . taming me. The part of me that's used to being alone and frightened and secretive. The part of me that's still shrilling at me how wrong it is to make another connection that I can hurt or disappoint, or have used against me like a goddamn pawn.  
  
And suddenly I feel a familiar tingle running along my skin and settling into my bones.  
  
No. Oh,  _God_ , no.  
  
“Look at me, Bruce,” Tony pants softly, and I open my eyes—not an easy feat, considering—looking into his. That searching look has returned, more intense than ever.  
  
From the corners of my eyes I can see the green flush is also back, and hell if I’m not slightly . . . bulkier.  
  
“Oh, God, Tony, I think—“ I start to say, and my voice is  _definitely_  deeper. I groan, turning my face away, trying to will it all—the voice, the bulk, the  _Hulk_ —away.  
  
Tony’s hand is still on my face, gentle and tender.  
  
“It’s okay,” he says lowly, comfortingly, even as his body uses mine and mine uses his. “Let the Other Guy come out to play, if he wants.”  
  
Startled again, to hear my own thoughts echoed back at me, I look at Tony and shake my head. “Can’t. . . .” and oh, God, my voice is still way too deep. “Stop.”  
  
“Bruce—“  
  
“I said  _stop_ , damnit!”  
  
And he does. Immediately. He pulls out and I instantly miss the sensation of being filled. Connected to someone.  
  
To  _him_.  
  
But it's better this way, right?  
  
He’s kneeling above me, watching me worriedly, still hard and lube-shiny. He looks lost, like he doesn’t know what to do. I don’t blame him, since I’m . . . Hulking-out right in front of his eyes. The fact that he hasn't run for his suit is impressive.  
  
I roll onto my side, into fetal position, closing my eyes as tears of rage and frustration leak out. I've never had two Incidents happen this close together before, but there's a first time for everything.  
  
“Don’t think I can stop it,” I rumble and the first of the discomfort starts, like a  _fire_  running alone my skin and bones. “Sorry.”  
  
“Don’t be sorry,” he tells me, and a second later, I feel his body pressed against my back. He spoons me, wrapping his arms around me like I’m a crying child. Well, he’s half right, anyway.  
  
Then the  _real_  discomfort begins. The kind that might be more properly termed  _agony_. It rips through my muscles and skull, and as always I expect to hear both start tearing apart like old cloth.  
  
“Don’t fight it, Bruce,” Tony’s whispering, kissing my shoulder again. “Don’t fight so hard.”  
  
“Hurts,” I grumble out from between clenched teeth.  
  
“Because you  _fight it_. If you just . . . let go, it won’t hurt so much.”  
  
“You  _promise_?” I demand, looking back at him angrily. How could he promise when he doesn’t _know_  what it’s like . . . what I go through every time this happens?  
  
Instead of shrinking away or running away . . . he merely smiles and kisses me, softly and lingeringly. A lover's kiss.  
  
Some of that fiery feeling dissipates and for a few moments, I don't know what I'm feeling, only that it's not rage. The Other Guy still wants to put in an appearance, of course, but he's not _angry_ , per say.  
  
“Yes, I promise,” Tony says, and his certainty makes me so . . . hopeful. And hope makes me angry . . . so . . . very . . .  _angry_.  
  
The fire and agony ramps up a notch as I fight and fight for control. I moan and curl back up on my side. Tony holds me tighter.  
  
“Let go, Bruce. I’m not scared.”  
  
“You should be.”  
  
“Yeah, well, I rarely do what I  _should_ , you know that." Tony grunts and shifts around, making himself comfortable around me. Not an easy thing to do with me shaking and tense and holding myself in as a tight a ball as I can manage. Not an easy thing with my body striving to twist and grow and become  _him_.  
  
And Tony's right, you know? It's the fighting it that hurts the most. Don't get me wrong, the change itself isn't happy sunshine wrapped in a candy coating, but trying to fight it is like trying to hold off a migraine: impossible.  
  
Really, I'm just prolonging the inevitable, and both the Other Guy and I know that.  
  
"You know, my theory on this—you suddenly starting to go all Green Jeans on me while I'm giving you the fucking of your life—is you're angry at yourself for wanting it. For wanting  _me_ ," Tony says almost wistfully.  
  
"Egotist."  
  
Tony snorts. "Well,  _duh_. But I don't just mean  _me_ , I mean a . . . human connection, for lack of a better term."  
  
Startled, yet again, my control slips, and the agony recedes . . . but I get noticeably . . . larger. Tony swears, but holds me even tighter.  
  
"Did I hit a nerve."  
  
I don't answer. All my attention is now focused on containment. Of my rage—of my _self_. But he’s right, damnit. I wonder if he ever gets sick of it.  
  
“. . . okay to want things, Bruce. It’s even more okay to  _have_  those things,” Tony murmurs, almost croons in my ear. “You don’t always have to be angry at yourself for being what you are.”  
  
“Monster,” I croak out, more tears squeezing out from behind my closed eyes. They scald my cheeks like lava.  
  
“No . . .  _human_ ,” Tony replies, chuckling. “Everything you feel is a natural human emotion. Desire, friendship, love, hate, anger—whatever. It’s human, and you can’t castigate yourself for being only human.  
  
“Now, sure, your stronger emotions, rage, especially, set you off in a way most humans never experience, but you  _can_  control it. You already have, in fact.”  
  
“Can’t.”  
  
“Yes, you can. But you’re too busy  _fighting it_  to control it. You can’t do both. That’s fighting a losing battle,” he tells me kindly, stroking my hair and laying his face on my shoulder. It feels cool in comparison to my fevered skin, and his stubble tickles.  
  
“Let go,” he says again. “You won’t hurt me or anyone else. You have no reason to, so you won’t.”  
  
“ _Reason_ ,” the Other Guy spits out like it’s a dead mouse, and laughs, the grating, rolling sound of stones being gargled in the throat of the ocean.  
  
“Yes,  _reason_. That thing you built your life around, Dr. Hulk.” Tony exhales, cool and somehow relaxing to me—and to the Other Guy. There’s no panic in that exhalation, no truncated shudder, as if he’s trying to hold in genuine fright. “Wouldn’t it feel good, for the first time, to let go without a fight? Have you ever thought that part of what makes you so angry when you’re the Other Guy is that you’re always keeping him chained up and locked in the cellar like a red-headed stepchild?”  
  
The Other Guy laughs again . . . or maybe I do. It’s hard to tell, because it’s not my normal laugh, nor is it his gargling stones-laugh. It’s like an amalgam of the two.  
  
“Hey: Big Guy?” Tony whispers in my ear. “You don’t perchance wanna swat me like a fly, do you? Not after saving my life, right?”  
  
I don’t know which of us reaches out and covers the little, human hand on our ridiculously grown patina-biceps, but the Other Guy is the one who answers Tony in a voice that’s almost human in its smallness: “No. Never.”  
  
“Then let go. Let go. I’ll be here to catch you.”  
  
“Puny human.”  
  
“That’s  _Mister_  Puny Human, to you.” Tony kisses his way down from nape to shoulder, and we shiver, me and the Other Guy, wanting more than anything to believe the things he says. . . .  
  
“I’ll catch you, and hold you, and keep you, whether you’re Bruce, or the Other Guy. To me, it’s all  _you_ , and I really,  _really like_  you.”  
  
I shake Tony’s arms off me. When I stand up, the bed creaks its relief. Despite the pain of holding everything in—what little of the Other Guy there is that hasn’t already come to the fore—I stagger to the window and look out. The view is impressive: all of Manhattan spread out beneath me like some kid’s Lego city.  
  
The Other Guy could smash it—all of it—without any real effort.  
  
Is that something I want to risk just on the word of Tony Stark? Is it  _really_?  
  
I lean against the wall, close my eyes, and shake my head.  
  
I’m a fool.  
  
I guess that’s why I finally  _do_  let go.  
  
Completely.  
  
And I guess that’s  _why_  instead of hindering the change, for once I just let it come and come and come—and it  _is_ , strangely, like coming. The relief of not fighting what I want and what the Other Guy wants is orgasmic, the release of titanic pressure so sudden I almost feel faint.  
  
But on the heels of that disorientation I understand something. For once, the Other Guy and I want the  _same thing_ , and it has nothing to do with fighting or hurting or destroying. We simply want to feel another person’s arms around us, neither restraining nor comforting, simply . . . holding us, and being glad of our presence.  
  
Behind the Other Guy, the bed gives the slightest suggestion of creaking. Soft footfalls pad closer, but stop after a few steps. The Other Guy can hear Tony’s heartbeat, steady and only slightly elevated—more excited, than scared—and smell his clean skin and expensive shampoo.  
  
“Feel better?” Tony asks, and the Other Guy nods reluctantly, almost sullenly. Then he turns around, facing Tony, who looks the Other Guy over for a long,  _long_  time, starting from his eyes, going down to his feet, and back up, ending with the eyes once more, and smiling with his own. “God, I love being right all the time.”  
  
“Figures,” the Other Guy grunts.  
  
Tony tilts his head curiously. “Did it hurt, still?”  
  
The Other Guy shrugs. Compared to how it usually is, the pain had been negligible. And he isn’t . . . angry. Not exactly. Isn’t itching to fight and rend and break. Oh, he’s still on edge, and probably always will be. The nature of the beast, after all. But most of that edginess is waiting for Tony’s  _real_  reaction—the horrified, disgusted one—to catch up with him.  
  
And it  _will_  catch up with him, right? Any second now.  
  
But Tony’s still staring at the Other Guy, smiling and doing that thing where his eyes crinkle and twinkle. He’s a man—just a man, of average height, with a nicely defined physique, an undiminished erection, and the worst case of bed-head ever seen this side of a hedgehog.  
  
The Other Guy feels a melancholy wave of something that he’s never really experienced before . . . a sudden, sledgehammer-subtle  _yearning_.  
  
He doesn’t just want  _someone’s_  arms around him. He wants  _Tony Stark’s_  arms around him. He wants it more than anything and has no idea how to go about getting it. Instead of making him angry, it's making him feel . . . sad. Scared. Lonely.  
  
The Other Guy buries his face in his hands.  
  
“You’re still beautiful,” Tony quietly informs him, approaching neither slowly and cautiously, nor quickly and startlingly. And when he gets to within a few inches of the Other Guy, Tony pulls the huge hands away from the Other Guy's face—a surprisingly easy trick—and looks up into his eyes. "Still  _incredible_." Tony grins crookedly, kisses the Other Guy's rough, green palms, and pulls those big, brute-strong arms around his shoulders. His own arms slide around the Other Guy’s waist. They don’t even fit all the way around, anymore.  
  
Funny, ‘cause the Other Guy’s arms fit around Tony just fine. . . .  
  
. . . any second, now. Right?


End file.
